Communications centers are utilized for sales and a wide range of customer service activities. Many different corporations have a need to use such communications centers. However, many of these corporations do not have a demand sufficient to justify a communications center dedicated solely to the individual corporation and/or may have a need to use such a facility on a part time basis, e.g., during certain hours of the day. For such a company it can be costly both in terms of infrastructure and personnel to maintain its own dedicated communications center. Such companies typically look to outsource such activities.
There is a need for methods and apparatus which allow a communications center, e.g., a call center, to interact with customers using a wide range of communications devices and/or to represent multiple different corporations with the customers of each corporation receiving appropriate service and/or interaction which looks, from the customers perspective, as service which is being provided by the particular company they seek to interact with. It is important that the customer interaction be consistent and match a user's expectations each time the customer seeks to contact the particular company. This may require a fair amount of device configuration to satisfy the customization needs of each individual company and/or the device requirements of the various customers. Methods and apparatus that allow communications center resources to be allocated among a plurality of different business affiliations on an as needed basis, while giving a consistent appearance and experience to customers would be beneficial. In fact, it would be desirable, if repeat contacts, e.g., calls, could be handled in a manner that appears to the customer as if he or she is interacting with the same customer service representative even if the communication, e.g., call, is in fact being handled by a different customer service representative and/or operator terminal.
One problem typically encountered by customers who interact with a support communications center is the need to provide detailed sets of information each time the customer starts a communications session or interacts with a new operator. Such information may be used to control operator terminal configuration and/or to retrieve customer data. It would be beneficial if methods and apparatus were developed which improved the customer experience by reducing the amount of redundant customer input and/or by giving the customer the impression that a follow-on session is proceeding smoothly with the same operator. In addition to improving the customer experience, the reduced time to restore the knowledge “state” of the system would translate directly into reduced costs and improve capital utilization.
In view of the above the above discussion, it should be appreciated that there is a need for improving the way communications centers, e.g., call centers, configure communications devices, access customer information and/or access information used to present one or more customer representative personas to a customer, as part of a customer interaction such as a telephone call or Internet interaction.